Full Metal Jacket

Continuity mistake: After Cowboy is hit by the sniper Animal Mother fires wildly and destroys part of the "My Toan" sign. A few seconds later you can see it is intact.

Jack Vaughan

Full Metal Jacket mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Joker and Rafterman are in transit on the chopper, we see the gunner firing out the cargo door. We can see out the cargo door that the ground is pretty far away, the chopper is obviously pretty high up in the air, so high that if there were people down on the ground it would be rather hard to see them. However the camera switches to the gunner's point of view shooting at people, and the chopper only seems to be about 20 feet off the ground.

RJR99SS

Factual error: In the sniper scene where Animal Mother disobeys Cowboy to go help 8-Ball and Doc, and Animal Mother peeks around the corner of a building to try and see the sniper and the sniper shoots at him, narrowly missing his face, the impact of the sniper's bullet on the wall and the sound of the gunshot occur a split second before the muzzle-flash in the distant window from where the sniper is shooting from. This would imply that both bullet and sound have travelled faster than light. (01:37:15)

Continuity mistake: After Lt. Touchdown has been shot, behind the tank, he falls to the ground with his rifle still grasped in one of his hands but when the marines move in to aid him his rifle has vanished.

Jack Vaughan

Full Metal Jacket mistake picture

Revealing mistake: When Private Pyle shoots himself you can see that the blood splatters from the side of the screen instead of going straight back from the back of his head.

Factual error: Joker would not have been allowed to go through basic training and out into the field with wire-rimmed glasses. He would have been issued plastic/cellulose-framed Regulation Prescription Glasses (AKA BCGs or "Birth Control Glasses") like Private Cowboy's.

Captain Defenestrator

Continuity mistake: When Hartman punches private Joker you can see Hartman swing with his left hand in one shot and a split second later (angle from the floor) when Joker has been struck, Hartman's right hand has made contact and is pulling back.

Factual error: When Pvt. Pyle commits suicide, he shoots himself through the skull at point-blank range with the tile wall of the bathroom only inches from the back of his head. The wall becomes splattered with blood and brain tissue but no hole in the wall is visible. Both the shot through Hartmann and the one through Pyle would have punched through the bathroom walls and quite possibly caused injury or death to anyone on the other side. (00:44:09)

Revealing mistake: In the early latrine scene when Privates Cowboy and Joker are mopping the floor, the mops they are using are dry. As they dip each mop into the bucket, there is no water dripping. When they move the bucket, the sound indicates it is empty, as anyone who has ever used a mop & metal bucket could validate.

Revealing mistake: We find out at the end of the movie that the sniper is a young girl, but earlier when the first shot is taken at Eightball, you can see the sniper's fingers on the fore end of the rifle - they appear to be an adult male's fingers. (01:31:27)

Factual error: The film is set in and around 1968. In one scene, a copy of Ursula LeGuin's novel "The Word for World is Forest" is seen at Joker's bedside. This novel was not published until 1976.

wizard_of_gore

Continuity mistake: When Joker is talking to the colonel about his peace badge, it is there at the beginning of the conversation, but then disappears when Joker turns his back to the camera. It then reappears in the next scene when he is walking along with Rafterman.

waringp

Continuity mistake: When Animal Mother calls Cowboy to get the lone sniper, Cowboy chooses 4 guys to go with him: No-Doze, Stutten, Donlon and Rock. Then Joker and Rafterman say they wanna go too, so that makes 7 men (including Cowboy) but we only see 6. (01:34:00)

Continuity mistake: As the men get out of bed to attack Pyle, a close-up of Cowboy shows him looking to Snowball. Both are in bottom bunks. Between them we see a pair of legs lower and hang from a top bunk. The shot changes to a more distant angle and the legs repeat the motion. (00:28:50)

johnrosa

Other mistake: When the sniper fires her rifle at Joker after his rifle jams, she fires at him and strangely no shell casings are ejected. A few bursts later and her rifle does eject shell casings.

Jack Vaughan

Continuity mistake: When Joker goes to see Cowboy and the squad are sitting in the temple, the dead Vietnamese's face can be seen without the hat covering it. When the photo is taken by Rafterman, his hat appears and is removed.

Factual error: At one point Joker is doing chin ups, with Hartman motivating him. Joker does three chin-ups, but not a single one of them was done properly. You're supposed to lock your elbows all the way out on the way down, and your chin needs to clear the plane of the bar. Joker never locks his arms out, barely gets over the bar. In reality Hartman would have been all over him about this, drill instructors are notoriously strict about proper technique.

RJR99SS

Revealing mistake: When Joker and Raptor are in the helo heading for the front, there is a view of Vietnamese being fired at by the door gunner with an M-60 machine gun. Several seconds pass in the scene while bullets should be tearing into the ground around them, but there are no indications of bullet strikes, even as the line of fire passes over a small creek.

stevewaclo

Continuity mistake: While Hartman is addressing the privates, who sit on the bleachers, the sky behind keeps swapping from dark grey to sunny, back and forth depending on the angle.

Sacha

More quotes from Full Metal Jacket

Trivia: R. Lee Ermey actually wrote all of Gunny Hartman's dialog himself. Ermey was involved in a serious car accident right before shooting, so Kubrick invited Ermey to come stay at his house in England to recover. While recovering Ermey read the script over and over, and he remarked that the Drill Instructor's dialog that was in the script was obviously the work of a screenwriter with a cliche imagination who obviously had no idea what boot camp was really like. So Kubrick allowed Ermey to re-write all of the dialog himself.

RJR99SS

More trivia for Full Metal Jacket

Question: Private Joker asks the gunner on the chopper about how he is able to shoot women and children, and the gunner replies by saying 'it's easy, you just don't lead them so much'. Does anyone know what that means?

Answer: To lead means to aim ahead of a moving target. His statement means that women and children don't run as fast as men, so you don't need to aim as far in front of them to hit them.

jle

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